The Deadly Daylight

Australian author Harrier imbues a classic whodunit with poetic melancholy in this haunting debut. Twelve-year-old Alice England, who has muscular atrophy in her leg due to complications during birth that also killed her twin sister, lives alone with her father in a seaside town and helps tend her family’s funeral home. Shunned and unkindly dubbed “Alice in Zombieland” by her classmates both for her limp and her father’s profession, Alice is friendless until she meets Violet Devenish, a fellow student who is deathly allergic to light and wears a black veil to protect herself from the sun. Harrier deliberately unspools the jam-packed plot at an unhurried pace, even when Violet’s beloved uncle George—who shares Violet’s allergy—is found dead of light exposure. Analytical Alice is immediately suspicious, thanks to the insight granted by her supernatural ability to “read the resonance” of objects belonging to the deceased, and her preoccupation with uncovering George’s murderer soon puts her at odds with the town, the insular Devenish clan, and eventually Violet herself. While Alice’s diversions occasionally slacken the tension, offbeat characters and lyrical writing sustain a thoroughly clever and engrossing riff on the murder mystery formula. Ages 9–12. (Mar.)